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Happy Casimir Pulaski Day!

This is Casimir Pulaski, giver of a holiday only Illinois celebrates and doer of other stuff, too. Do you think he hated Mondays, too?

I woke up this morning with the really strong feeling that I should have the day off work. Then, I checked my email and had a message from Millie’s Pierogi, a mail-order pierogi outfit based in Ohio. (Yes, I subscribe to a lot of e-commerce newsletters through which I can order meats, cheeses and starches.) This convergence of events led me to realize: It’s Casimir Pulaski Day!

This day is very important to me for several reasons:

1. I am not Polish but I know a lot of Polish people, having grown up on the South Side of Chicago. They make excellent food (see above: pierogi and let’s not forget sausages or kolacky) and excellent White Sox (see: A.J. Pierzynski).

2. Growing up, this day always marked a three-day weekend for Illinois public schools, even though most of us, when pressed, would not have been able to tell you much — if anything — about Casimir Pulaski. We should have been able to: Look at his amazing mustache, above, not to mention his showy horse-riding skills.

3. Pulaski is a street about a mile from where I grew up in Chicago and contains many landmarks of which I am fond:

O’Reilly’s Daughter, a pub outside of which I met and shook hands with Barack Obama in 2000 at a fundraiser for the only election he ever lost;

a Showbiz Pizza (I think now a Chuck E. Cheese) where I celebrated my birthday once, even though my mom was very nervous I’d be kidnapped there;

4. Because Casimir Pulaski Day weekend figures prominently in my book, The End of the World As We Know It. I can’t be sure, but I sincerely think it might be the only teen action-adventure sci-fi comedy ever to be set on and around this auspicious day. And, yes, I do promise that if you read it, you will have a more-than-cursory understanding of who Casimir was and why he was important. (Plus, other stuff.)